This article [originally published as “Spiritual Formation in the Church” in The Journal for Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, 2014, Vol. 7, No. 2, 292–311] asked five thought leaders within the field of spiritual formation to briefly respond to six questions regarding spiritual formation in the church. The attempt here is not to assess spiritual formation within any particular church or even the church-at-large, but rather to reflect together on the way in which local communities of Jesus-followers ought to function as the primary relational context for formation. As you read these responses, reflect on your own experience with spiritual formation within the local church context. How has your experience been similar to or different than what is presented here? What common themes do you see in these responses? What seems missing? If you have a thought or reflection that you would like to add to this conversation, please send it to us at editor.sfj@biola.edu.

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01.  What Is Your Sense Of How The Local Church Is Doing When It Comes To Facilitating Spiritual Formation?

Chandler: This question is more difficult to answer because it is neither easy nor appropriate to categorize all local churches – including those in the U.S. and elsewhere. On one hand, some may level stinging criticism against the local church as being anemic, ineffective, and disunified, evidenced by the tepid spiritual temperature of many members, beginning with its leaders. These critics accuse the church of succumbing to secular pressures, of compromising biblical values and practices, and of lacking spiritual power to be an effective and holy witness in the world. On the other hand, others boast with a sense of triumphalism that the church is moving forward. One index for this hyper-positive assessment locates in the growth of American megachurches. Megachurches, however, struggle with responding to consumer-driven expectations in order to maintain their appeal and can easily become preoccupied with maintaining a well-oiled machine. Interestingly, how effective megachurches are in fostering spiritual transformation and in reproducing disciples is questionable, as Willow Creek’s 2007 Reveal study suggests.

My view is that the church is in crisis, as it struggles with its very identity in post-modern culture, and as it suffers from internal malaise producing marked spiritual decline. The local church in the U.S. has lost her spiritual moorings. She has swallowed the lie that numbers tell the whole story: size of budget, baptisms, and buildings, to say nothing of weekly attendance. If local churches focused on the spiritual formation of their members rather than simply increasing their membership, might not the American church recapture the Kingdom mandate of loving and serving God and others with abandon? While I view the church’s anemia as indicative of the lack of spiritual formation intentionality through a biblically-supported process, I also resonate with great hope that God is moving in and through the local church, albeit in weakness and in inconspicuous ways like leaven infiltrating yeast. May the church awaken out of slumber!

 

Wilhoit: There are certainly bright spots where a fulsome and healthy spiritual formation is occurring. My sense is that the majority of these churches are not intentionally aligned with the contemporary spiritual formation movement. These churches seem to have the rich formational soil of relational connections, time available for relational depth, service and participation in church life, suffering, engaging worship, and a commitment to teaching the Bible. These churches seem more to have stumbled into spiritual formation more than intentionally chosen it. That is not to minimize the good work that is being done through the heightened interest in spiritual formation, but much of this emphasis has focused on individual formation and practices rather than on community formation.

I would encourage the systematic study of these bright spots. Seminaries could contribute immensely to this work by studying churches where positive formation is occurring. My sense is that an important variable is the way these churches help members negotiate their relationship to the larger culture. Certainly a “Christ of culture” orientation leads to spiritual deformation. Spiritual formation is not a program but our humble and active cooperation with the Holy Spirit to promote the sanctification of God’s people and the obedience of his church to our Lord Jesus.

 

TenElshof: Church history speaks much to the reasons spiritual formation feels like a new concept in our evangelical churches.  Spiritual Formation that involves true integration of the mind, body, and will of its members takes deep intimate connection with God and others.  The church has chosen another way.  In both the training of leaders and the spiritual development of church members the evangelical church has leaned heavily on teaching and understanding the text of God’s word and far less on what is being experienced of God’s word in the heart and emotions creating a gap between what is known intellectually and believed and what is experienced in the heart and lived.  This has created disintegration of mind, body, and will individually and corporately in the community of the body of Christ.

God concepts are conscious, intellectually informed, and contemplated, with decisions being made about them with our will.  These are the things known to be true about God and yet many do not feel the power of these beliefs in their day-to-day living.  Although all humans are created in the Image of God, this relational image was distorted by sin and wounded within relationships leaving the feeling of being unloved instead of loved by God, or in guilt or shame from sin, feeling God as distant. This experiential knowledge throughout life creates unconscious images of God.  These unconscious God images are more persuasive in prayer and more powerful in motivating behavior than the God concepts learned and believed.   This conflict between the concept of God and image of God is what is hid from God because it brings feelings of shame.

Churches I believe are having a difficult time bringing these two aspects of people’s lives together and it is within this juncture that the Holy Spirit is at work to bring holistic spiritual growth to their lives.  Life in the church becomes very messy when people begin to share honestly and authentically their stories and it is easier to pretend everyone is living the abundant life.  This “being with” and listening to each other takes time and requires slowing down to apply good listening and responding skills and added resources for support.  It is easier to continue to allow people to maintain some distance from God and others and not get too close where time, money, and energy will be consumed.

 

Tan: In general, the local church is not doing a good job in facilitating the spiritual formation of its members because it still tends to get distracted or side-tracked with other secondary concerns and issues. Over fifteen years ago, John Stott in his opening address at the First International Consultation on Discipleship held in September 1999 in England said:

I wonder how you would sum up the Christian situation in the world today. For me, it’s a strange, rather tragic, and disturbing paradox. On the one hand, in many parts of the world the church is growing by leaps and bounds. But on the other hand, throughout the church, superficiality is everywhere, [sic] That’s the paradox. Growth without depth. No doubt God is not pleased with superficial discipleship. The apostolic writers of the New Testament declare with one voice that God wants His people to grow into maturity in Christ.Cited in S. Y. Tan, Full Service: Moving from Self-Serve Christianity to Total Servanthood (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006), 135.. 

 

His words still ring true today although there are now more pastors and local churches focusing more on discipleship training and the spiritual formation of church members, partly because of the Intentional Discipleship Training or IDT movement world-wide, and the powerful influence of key leaders and writers in the spiritual formation field such as Richard Foster (and the Renovaré organization that he founded) and the late Dallas Willard. Many books have also been published in the last few years on discipleship and discipleship training or disciple making in the local church.

 

Barton: There is as wide a difference in how local churches are doing at facilitating spiritual formation as there is in how individual families are doing at raising healthy children.  Some are doing better than others; all have their particular strengths and weaknesses.  That said, I do think churches in general are struggling for clarity about what spiritual transformation is and how it happens in the life of person.  There is still a bias toward assuming that if one is attending church services regularly, participating in a small group, serving with one’s gifts, and tithing faithfully they are transforming. This is decidedly not the case.

Many churches are also struggling to know what it means to “bring” spiritual formation to the corporate (community) setting and have given little thought as to how to resource all stages of the faith journey.  Some are very good at evangelizing and resourcing those who are in the seeking phase of their faith journey while others are very good at resources and discipling young Christians who are new to the faith.  Some tend to be oriented towards providing solid teaching and other resources for those who are farther along on the on the journey; most do not know what to do with people who are experiencing the dark night of the soul and, in fact, it is at this stage of the spiritual journey that many faithful church-goers drop out.

In addition, some churches minister more effectively to one generation or another, freely acknowledging that this is their calling and passion.  Others just keep doing what they have always done without giving any attention at all to generational differences and how those differences might affect the ways in which they encourage and foster spiritual formation in that generation. Obviously, for a church to effectively facilitate spiritual formation, it needs to be a place where all God’s children—no matter what stage they are in—can find nurture and sustenance.

A recent Barna survey found that a majority of self-identified Christians today (52 percent) believe there is much more to the Christian life than what they have experienced, and 46 percent say their life has not changed at all as a result of going to church.From the Maximum Faith Project by the Barna Research Group, 2010.  There is no doubt that people in our culture today are spiritually savvy and have many other options besides the church for meeting their need and desire for spiritual transformation. These statistics and my own experiences of working closely with many Christians relative to their spiritual life suggests that the church has real work to do in learning how to facilitate spiritual formation effectively at all stages of faith.

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02.  What Do You Think Are The Biggest Obstacles To Spiritual Formation In The Local Church?

Tan: The local church and its pastors and leaders have many things to do and be occupied or preoccupied with, including more secondary concerns such as buildings, budgets, meetings, programs, etc. Other important foci such as preaching, worship, fellowship, outreach and evangelism, world mission, social concern and justice, pastoral care and counseling and visitation ministries, healing ministries, and support and recovery groups, etc. may also take up so much time that the local church can easily lose its main and primary goal or focus on facilitating the spiritual formation of its members. Being too busy with too many activities and programs, with a lack of proper biblical focus and a lack of intentional disciple making processes and programs are the biggest obstacles to spiritual formation in the local church. The pastoral and lay leadership of the church also need to have a united vision and biblical priority for making the development of Christlikeness in the church members the church’s primary goal and focus, and therefore tie other ministries in the church to serve this primary goal. The spiritual interest of the church members in wanting to grow in Christ or lack thereof can also be a major obstacle. Prayer and dependence on the Holy Spirit’s deep work of grace and inner transformation in the hearts of the church members are therefore crucial.

 

Chandler: Several obstacles inhibit the church from carrying out her mission to create venues for the Holy Spirit to spiritually engage its members and thus foster individual and corporate encounters with the living God for inner transformation. First, preoccupation with ministry dynamics, including church administration, operations, and finances (all needful elements!), shifts focus from people to processes, which often skew Kingdom priorities. Further, competing priorities related to various ministries dilute a clear ministry focus. Churches may desire to be all things to all people, without clearly understanding their God-given calling. Third, if the senior leader and leadership team do not carry and implement the vision for spiritually equipping its members, the church will likely encounter drift and/or debilitation. The local church will not rise above the spiritual water level of its senior leader/s or leadership team.

Fourth, the cultural pressures attached to what comprises a successful local church (i.e., church size, being “attractional”) can become crippling. Western mindsets of success can undermine quality in favor of quantity, leaving church members a mile wide and an inch deep. Fifth, in a world of complexity, the local church may overlook that engaging in spiritual formation need not be complicated, if a clear vision is articulated and a realistic plan developed. While being relevant without losing biblical integrity remains challenging, churches have access to a renaissance of spiritual formation resources to assist them.

Sixth, pastoral leaders and church members may view spiritual formation as being solely an internal process that lacks missional expression. Nothing can be further from the truth, as the life of Jesus reveals. Being conformed to the Father and the Father’s will, Jesus exhibited untold expressions of service to others. Likewise for believers, spiritual formation relates to inner transformation with outer manifestation – in love and service to God and others.

 

Wilhoit: In education it has become common parlance to speak of three different curriculums that are always present in any education. The first is the explicit curriculum. That is what you say is going to happen in a spiritual formation program, an adult education program or a youth program. We can get a sense of this by looking at the materials and lesson topics, etc. The next level is the hidden curriculum. At one level these are the unintended consequences. You design a discipleship program to work for all your young people, but it really only works for the extroverts who relish the discussion. As Dallas Willard put it, “Your system is perfectly designed to produce the results you are getting.” What are the subtle messages about formation that people are picking up that may be contrary to the explicit message? A friend who does a great deal of church consulting said that one common element of the hidden curriculum is that if a person has leadership gifts then you often get fast tracked into leadership and bypass discipleship and formational activities. Many churches need to look carefully at what “hidden messages” they are sending about the importance of formation. Simply put, if the church leadership is not doing their own formation then the word gets out. Actions speak louder than words in this arena. The final curriculum dimension is the null curriculum. All curriculum must be selective in the topics and experiences that are included. And what is left out indirectly teaches. As Susanne Johnson says, “However, it is important for us to note what is being taught by what is not taught…the null curriculum affects the values we adopt, the perspectives we choose, the dispositions we develop, the character we form, and the community we become.”Susanne Johnson, Christian Spiritual Formation in the Church and Classroom (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), 134-5. Church leaders need to see what the hidden and null curriculums which affect their formation are. One of my students remarked that in her church “the Holy Spirit was the null curriculum. He was never mentioned and that taught me a great deal.”

 

TenElshof: There are many obstacles to spiritual formation in the church.  Many of them give rise out of the culture of our day.

This includes a naturalistic assumption that the church should accept whatever is currently happening as normative and not face the reality of how what is currently happening interfaces with relationship with God and others.  This keeps the church in a place of hiding sin and pretending to be a place of strong integrated Christians instead of humble people who know the reality of sin and internal disintegration of what is believed. Felt, and chosen to live day to day.

Our society also takes and paves the way to take freedom without responsibility and to follow our own desires.  A commitment to follow Christ is very different.  Christians in the church having made the decision to follow Christ, are, like him, to take up their cross and share in his suffering.  Suffering is when attachments to our own desires are sacrificed and attachment to Christ’s calling is sought.  The church community needs to empower their people to hear, listen, and be responsible to respond in obedience to God’s calls in life even when their own desires lead down another path.

Christians also suffer in their everyday battles with temptation to depend on self, believing it is “all about me” rather than “all about God.”  It is far easier to follow their own desires rather than his, to give into their battles with sin and Satan instead of maintaining their focus on what God is calling them to.  These battles leave scars and they need the church community through the “One Another’s” of Scripture to help them keep their focus and stay in the green pastures and quiet waters of his loving presence and abiding love.

The main obstacle I see to spiritual formation in the church is that we have so few leaders themselves who are living out the Trinitarian model of relationship within their leadership so it can trickle down into the life of the church.  Consequently, people are not sure of how to keep in step with the Holy Spirit’s work in their life.  The church, unlike the first century, is not really reflecting being God’s family living in unity, mutual love, and distinction and thereby being God’s avenue to the world.  Rather, when looking at the church, the people of the world see much of what they already experience and turn and look for another way.  This is truly not God’s design.